• Magic Doors
• The Rip
• Machine Gun
• Hunter
• We Carry On
• Update: Found another! Nylon Smile

I like them all pretty much, with “The Rip” being my favorite. “Machine Gun” is alot different but grew on me. I’m really interested to hear the studio version of “We Carry On” – that one could end up being one of my favorites.

So when is Theremin Hero coming out for the XBox 360 featuring Portishead?

Portishead official website

Update: Bonus – Portishead’s cover/remix of Tom Jones’s “Motherless Child” is absolutely fantastic.

• Either Johnny Cash was much more well traveled than Ludacris, or Luda is selective about where he gets his hoes.
• There is potential for a hit Johnny Cash vs. Ludacris mashup album in the deep south, Louisville, Baltimore, eastern Nebraska, Seattle, Houston and a small part of NE New Jersey.

So what are your favorite podcasts?

They will be also giving away a new track off the album every week leading up to the release starting on January 8th at flightoftheknife.com (I’m guessing “giving away” = “streaming on the website”)

This has me very excited. I can’t wait to see them stop through Indy again, and any shows within a decent drive I’ll probably go see as well.

Update: Bryan Scary YouTube for those interested why their live shows are so awesome. Sort of a medly of live stuff.

8/3 – Lord of the Yum-Yum, The Born Again Floozies at Radio Radio

So I headed out last night with the idea to see the Born Again Floozies at Radio Radio in Indianapolis. they are great fun always good to see live.

Their opener was Lord Of The Yum-Yum, a guy I’d heard about before and was sort of intrigued by.

Now imagine a family taking a Family Truckster style road trip vacation from Connecticut to California. There’s Mom, Dad and Little Billy. Little Billy has ADD. But.. oh no! Mom forgot Little Billy’s Ritalin!! By the time the Family Truckster gets to Nebraska, Little Billy never shuts up and is singing random gibberish sing-songs and using the seat in front of him for a drum. Mom wants to kill Little Billy, Dad wishes he’d stayed home and kept banging his Secretary and Little Billy cluelessly keeps shouting gibberish and calling it his new songs.

THAT is Lord of the Yum-Yum.

That is also why for the first time I up and walked out of a concert. I just couldn’t stay any longer after the first few “songs”. Why he got such a good reaction from the crowd I reallllly don’t get.

I really wanted to see the Floozies, but the opener was really just so terrible to me and the crowd so big that a bit of a claustrophobic feeling + unlistenable gibberish = me getting the heck out of there.

Sorry Floozies

Yeah, so that night didn’t exactly turn out like I expected.

• Apparently crime really isn’t as bad as people perceive it. Maybe people will calm the fuck down about all this panic over a “crime asploshun!!” in Indianapolis that really isn’t. Although I doubt it. Because even though The Star carried this story, it won’t stop them from sensationalizing crime themselves and contributing to the problem.
• I think I got about 100 IQ points dumber reading about the Scientific Proof For The Existence Of God!!!111eleventomgbbq!!. Really, if you have any sort of logical reasoning skills at all it’s easy to decimate this thing into a million pieces. but I value my sanity FAR too much to actually read it again and do that in blog form. The best part is probably the uranium part. jeebus.
• A great find, CJ notes the appearance of Indianapolis in a new Marvel comic! Too bad they based the art on an old picture of the circle with the now non-existent Market Square Arena visible. Oops.
• God I hate the Pacers anymore. And not just because of horrible management decisions and blundered personnel. No, also because they still refuse to have any redheads on the dance team. Heathens!
• Schadenfreude, thy name is Ted Stevens Getting Raided By The FBI. I really hope they showed up in a BIG TRUCK! In honor of this amazing news, I went back and found the Ted Stevens internet speech techno remix.
• Nerds + Showbiz Pizza + The Rockafire Explosion + New Ms. Booty = AWESOME.
• This REALLLLY deserves its own post but damn if I have the time right now. So Thanks Mitch! Because you caved to the property tax whiners (of whom so many are people who have been paying far under what they should have been for years – I’m looking at you Meridian Kessler District) and put off the new tax evaluations Marion County is going to have a $52 million shortfall. Don’t worry, Indianapolis is only the economic engine for the state you pretend to represent completely (but in the end you just end up representing road construction companies and people who believe your fake accent). A big ol’ hearty middle finger to Mitchie Rich The Amazing Midget Governor.
• I’ve been posting more on CWAMB lately. I have a big post eventually planned for a what-if solution for the NBA: a 50-60 team league with three divisions and European-style relegation. Keep an eye out for it.
• Couldn’t agree more with this at Tapped. The way our politics work, the short sighted politician who only spends money in time of disaster instead of spending money when there is no disaster gets rewarded. The latter just gets yelled at for spending tax money and *gasp* maybe raising taxes. Heavens to Betsy, noooo!
• This is horrifying. Dear Oklahoma, I enjoyed my time there for a national high school student council convention in 1995, but you are now dead to me.
• Mega-Kudos to FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. You couldn’t be more right about the absolutely TERRIBLE broadband policy in this country. Making the link between this and the rampant media consolidation in the US is very nicely done.

I think that’s it? I hope?

Fri 27 Jul – Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears, THE HEDRONS, Tiger City

I’ve been meaning to post this review for a week now but just now getting the time to get around to it. Unforutantely that means it’ll be a little shorter and less specifics as I would have liked.

First band was Tigercity, with a style I never would have thought I would have liked. A poppy/funk/disco sorta sound. Barry Gibb called, he wants his voice back. But in all seriousness they were crazy fun and made me wish I could dance at all in a way that wouldn’t horrify and blind onlookers. Great fun and worth checking out for sure. I picked up their 6-track album Pretend Not To Love and have had alot of fun with it.

Next up was a band I had heard some about and was looking forward to seeing in person, THE HEDRONS from Scotland. Wow. Holy shit. As I told the lead singer Tippi after the show at the merch table “that was fucking SPECTACULAR.” Those girls rocked my socks off into next year. A great band of energetic punk rock, and not the more modern whiny faux-punk but real, honest to goodness badass punk rock songs. The stage presence of all the members was great, and Tippi knew just how to work the crowd, actually coming down into the crowd at Radio Radio with her mic during the last song of their set. Doesn’t hurt that they are all incredibly gorgeous and rocking the Scottish accents. You MUST see them if you have the chance.

And the final act for the night was a band I saw not too long ago and was glad that they were making a second swing through Indy – Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears. They blew me away last time as the second to last act, and as the closer they did not disappoint. They played a number of songs from the new album they are working on (coming out in January hopefully, according to drummer Brian Bauer). Their music is so infectious and just plain FUN, and Scary’s interludes and stories he wraps around the songs in a live setting make seeing them live a great experience that enhances their music when you’ve heard only the album (The Shredding Tears). They played an encore and the crowd got them to play one more after that even.

Overall a spectacular show, ****. You should have been there.

That was Friday. Then hit another show on Sunday in Bloomington

 Sun 29 Jul – Man Man, Everything, Now!

Another review I’ve been putting off for lack of time. I’d never been down to The Bluebird in Bloomington, IN before. But with Man Man coming to town and Everything Now! opening (a local favorite of mine) I couldn’t miss it.

First up was Everything Now!, a band I saw play with Bryan Scary a few weeks prior. Local boys from Muncie I believe, they put on a heck of a show. I actually enjoy them live much more than I do their album Bible Universe. Live they come across as much more straight up pop/rock and less experimental. Solid show they put on and you should check them out.

I first heard of/saw Man Man at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago in 2006. Their massive level of insanity and noise backed by catchy tunes and bizarre lyrics immediately got my attention. I picked up both their albums The Man in a Blue Turban With a Face and Six Demon Bag (the latter being far superior, IMO) after that and fell in love with the crazy.

They did not disappoint at The Bluebird. The confined venue just enhanced the level of chaos to their show. Everything used as percussion (even one of the lights swinging from the ceiling at one point). Multi-instrumentalists switching between guitar, xylophone, trumpet, sax, random percussion, bass and keyboards. On the surface many of the songs sound like pure chaos but almost all of them have this hidden melody/tune beneath the crazy that ties it together. It basically feels like you are experiencing a show at an insane asylum where the inmates decided to form a band. You’ve got to experience them at least once.

As one friend who was present at the show said “I’ve never been to a show that I liked so much where I still didn’t want the album”. That is true, to a point. Man Man is a band whose live experience just CANNOT translate to an album. But when recording an album, it seems they are forced to pull back on the crazy a bit and focus on the songs which can actually be a good thing. So I would recommend at least checking out Six Demon Bag (their later and a bit more… structured album)

***1/2 show, if just because the small venue almost made Man Man a little TOO loud and overwhelming at times.
A good weekend for concerts. Thinking about maybe going to The Born Again Floozies at Radio Radio tonight and tomorrow, if I can convince a friend who’s possibly coming into town to go  to a show, Bigger Than Elvis (also at Radio Radio).

Crossposted from my Last.fm journal

Sat 16 Jun – Everthus the Deadbeats, Everything, Now!, Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears, This Is My Condition

All ratings are out of four stars.

Saturday night saw me at Radio Radio in Fountain Square for a show headlined by Everthus the Deadbeats.

First up was This Is My Condition. I’m being nice when I say it was… not so good. More truthfully, it sucked. He is a one man band with a drum set, loop pedals and a guitar on his lap that he plays with the drumsticks. In the end it sounds like what happens when you give twin 6 year olds a drum set and a guitar for Christmas. Whatever his condition is, there’s medicine for that now. 1/2

Everything, Now! put on a HELL of a show, rocking the pop-rock and getting us all jazzed up after the dismal opener. The Muncie, Indiana natives filled Radio Radio with a great sound and had me buying their album, Bible Universe at their merc table. ***1/2

Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears had the most elaborate stage setup I’ve ever seen at Radio Radio. A big backdrop, a sign to ‘Scaryville’ and a wooden … housing(?) around Bryan Scary’s keyboard. Also present were crazy costumes – the best descriptions are Zombie Wyatt Earp, Zombie Tom Petty, Zombie Communist Dude, Zombie Nikola Tesla and The Hamburglar. heh although I’m sure that’s not what they were going for. Anyway, their set was full of so much energy it had the crowd dancing and the venue humming with “damn these guys kick ass”. The best way I can describe their sound would be Rocky Horror + Elton John + Psychedelic Rock. Maybe? If they’re coming to your town DEFINITELY check them out. Worth the price of admission and more. I picked up their album The Shredding Tears after the show. ****

Everthus the Deadbeats unfortunately had to follow up what I consider to be the best back to back sets I’ve ever seen at Radio Radio. They gave a solid performance, were strangely costumed and sounded really solid. I’ve never been a HUGE fan of theirs when I have seen them before but they are sounding a bit more polished. When they play their songs that have more structure they are much better. Unfortunately they have too many songs that trend towards experimental and noisy. **1/2

So apparently Last.fm was bought by CBS.

Marvelous. I have predictions.

1. It will start off good with a cash infusion for some dream features the creators have been wanting to do for awhile
2. CBS will start to get antsy and want a return on investment
3. last.fm will try to bridge the gap between a vibrant Web 2.0 community and making money for its new corporate masters. The old users will stick around but will start feeling the changes and looking for alternatives.
4. after a year or two of trying a best of both worlds approach, CBS will demand changes to make them more money. The old users will start leaving and the users left will be new and know nothing of the community standards.
5. The users that are left (mayeb higher numbers but less buy in and attachment to the community) will turn the social aspect into a wasteland of stupid comments, bickering and flamewars. Last.fm will slowly wither on the vine as the site transitions from community driven and vibrant web 2.0 to yet another corporate attempt at vibrant web 2.0 that fails miserably

Ah well.

For those curious, Flickr is currently somewhere between steps 3 and 4 after their purchance by Yahoo.

Update: MySpace is most defintiely a 5+ on the above timeline.

So I was inspired. Had this idea a few days ago and finally decided to make it happen. Got the bright idea to make a Guitar Hero spoof called Accordion Hero.

Thanks to michele*lee at flickr for tagging this accordion player photo [link moved for above reasons] as a creative commons license.

This is naturally creative commons, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike